Testbed Farm is unique as the fruit and vegetables we grow or our customers that eat them lovingly. Doing things differently is the typical for us now but that wasn’t exactly by choice. Testbed was developed and shaped to address issues that many entrant farmers face:

• limited access to viable land to farm

• limited resources that often translates to limited available time, as most entrant farmers are self funded and need to work off farm in order to farm for themselves

• knowledge and varietal loss in the various forms of sustainable agricultural practices and culturally relevant crops, that were previously past down generation to generation and no longer are

Working within a soil food web focused outlook, adapting and adopting principles from Permaculture, Regenerative, Bio-dynamic, Korean natural, post modern Cuban and Japanese cultural farming practices deeply influenced our farming outlook. Employing published scientific case study work to identify the shared mechanisms and principles in the fields of botany, soil microbiology, even dipping into organic chemistry to best understand what is the best modern approach to farming long term-was just the start for our farm.

Through newly found knowledge, armed with base biota and base saturation soil data for several years prior, we focused accumulated experience and accreditation in organic horticulture and began developing our own regenerative methodology. Based on regenerative techniques, thermophilic manure based compost and endemic aerated compost teas, we broke ground at our original 1/2 acre site in late 2022 and began regenerating the depleted and compacted soil there. The rest is history and since then we continue to produce literal tons of produce every year from the original Testbed plot.

In 2026 we are expanding into a second nearby location on Mactavish Rd which we began transitioning from the previous farmer in late 2025. The Mactavish site is poised to act as our community hub as a systems demonstration farm, a home for educational offerings and workshops alongside onsite food, floriculture and seed production!

We are always looking to share the hard earned lessons through our apprenticeship program, presentations and sharing our data with like minded agrarians. So please do reach out with any and all questions, inquiries, concerns or insight required. We are happy to help. -TBF